


Moments

by cabbageboy



Series: The Stars in Your Eyes [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Love, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabbageboy/pseuds/cabbageboy
Summary: Maybe you can pinpoint the exact moment you fell in love with someone, the thing they did or said that slid a key into the lock around your heart. Or maybe you've been falling for so long you can't even remember when it started, because it feels like that is the way it has always been.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Series: The Stars in Your Eyes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017682
Comments: 28
Kudos: 73





	1. Laughter

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying something a little different
> 
> This is a series of vignettes about falling in love.
> 
> It takes place in the same universe of my fic Did She Know. You don't have to read that to understand what is going on but if you haven't read that I would be delighted if you did. I may us some references from it in the future.

12:38 am  
December 21st  
Sophomore year of high school  
Glimmer’s Holiday party

Her laugh is different.

It sounds the same, but you know it’s different.

You can also tell that the change is because of you.

You told a story, or maybe it was a dumb joke, and everyone laughed.

Really, it’s weird that you managed to single out the sound of her laugh over every voice in the den, every crunch of potato chips, every melody that hummed through the speakers.

At the same time it’s not weird at all, the way you’re both so tuned in to each other.

The shift is almost imperceptible, and if you asked anyone else at the party they would think you were out of your mind or imagining things.

This new laugh, the one that was especially for you, had a quality that you didn’t know how to describe. 

It was warmer. 

It was that first step into the kitchen on a Saturday morning, the patch of sun warmed tile radiating through your socks in a stark change from the frigid flooring of the hall. 

It was that sip of tea after waiting patiently for it to cool, the lemon and chamomile hitting your tongue. 

It was a towel that came out of the dryer just in time for your shower. 

Your eyes find hers, the way they always do.

Something clicks. 

It sounded the same, but the way it felt? The way hearing it made you feel? That was vastly different. 

So maybe her laugh didn’t change for you. Maybe something deep within you, a string that had been pulling tighter and tighter, a branch under the weight of snow, snapped, and you changed for her.

Or maybe you changed for each other in that same slow and gradual dance; a languid waltz you’ve been twirling around each other for as long as you could remember, not really sure when you even made your way to the dance floor or joined hands. 

All you know is that now that you have noticed it, noticed the feeling that blooms in your chest, the haze that blankets your consciousness, the sting beginning in your eyes, you never want to stop feeling this way.

You don’t ever want to stop falling in love with her.

So you don’t.


	2. Butterflies

2:47 pm  
August 31st  
Seventh grade  
Last day of summer vacation

You’ve never been one for butterflies.

Rather, you’ve never understood the notion that one could feel butterflies in their stomach.

Your stomach was accustomed to all kinds of sensations; fear, pain, warmth, comfort, hunger, weight.

But butterflies? 

You’ve heard the phrase so much, heard other people talk about it so often, that you don’t know if you’re capable of feeling like that.

Because, surely, it would have happened by now.

You don’t know why today would be any different.

You’re alone in the kitchen, and she is out in the garden. If you finish your afternoon chores early enough you can make it to the end of the street before the community center’s basketball game starts. 

You don’t really like basketball, but she does, and the air conditioned gym (with free ice cream on the last day of summer) wasn’t the worst place you could spend the afternoon.

So you race through the dishes and clean the oven.

The back door creaks open and you hear the hinge squeal as it closes.

Footsteps are heavy but uncertain. You know they’re hers. You can practically feel her behind you.

So you turn around to take in what you’re sure will be her dirt stained jeans and sweaty t-shirt, wisps of blonde escaping her ponytail and sticking to her forehead.

But in her hands is a single flower, a pink rose from one of the bushes. 

She bites her lip and you can tell that the blush dusting her cheeks isn’t from the sun or the afternoon of yard work she just did.

She holds the rose up and you can see that the thorns have been carefully trimmed off. You can’t move, can barely breathe, and after a few beats of her letting you silently examine the flower she gestures up and you know what she wants. 

You nod.

She reaches up to slide the flower into your hair, pinning a brown curl behind your ear.

As she pulls her hand back it brushes the curve of your jaw and you both gasp.

And you realize that you have felt butterflies before.

You just didn’t realize how often you felt them.


	3. Watercolor

10:16 am  
March 24th  
Senior year of college  
Saturday, spring break

Sometimes you feel dull, muted.

Like yourself, but half there, half erased. 

Translucent.

You’re there and people see you, but not enough and not in any capacity that matters.

You wake up every morning and don’t quite understand what she sees when she looks at you, why she bothers when she could do better.

It’s too much sometimes.

Like you’ll break apart at her touch, flutter away in the wind, a cloud of whispered sobs and broken promises.

But you catch her staring and think that maybe you’re not muted, or dull.

Or you might be.

But to her you’re watercolor, swirling with misunderstood complexity.

You’re not easy to get along with, and people make the mistake of not taking you seriously.

But that doesn’t make you any less beautiful, any less of an art form all your own.

You’re here with her, in the apartment you share with the kitten you just adopted, and she stares at you while you hold them like a baby. 

She’s leaning on the doorframe into the kitchen, potatoes sizzling on the stove behind her.

And she just won’t stop looking at you like that.

You giggle and walk up to her, tilting your head up for a kiss and she grins into your mouth.

She boops you on your nose with the spatula, leaving a dot of olive oil on the very tip, and has the decency to look embarrassed that she touched your face with the utensil she was just cooking with.

You go to the bathroom to wash your face while she finishes plating up your breakfast and when you return she is sitting at the kitchen table with a candle flickering gently.

You blush when she stands to pull out your chair, returning to her own seat after helping you scoot up to the table.

You thank her, sharing gentle smiles, before looking down at your plate.

The hash brown is in the shape of a heart.

She looks at you like the world wouldn’t turn without you, because for her it wouldn’t.


	4. Tiny, Little Flashlights

1 am  
September 4th  
Fourth Grade  
Your first overnight school trip

Your foster home was in the city.

The air was dense. Industrial clouds hung low, greying the atmosphere. Light pollution just reflected back down at you. That impenetrable sheet, a suffocating reminder that not even the night sky was for you.

You knew that above it, logically, there were stars.

You assumed it was just black, that stars, little dots, were all you’d see.

You didn’t know that on top of the billions of tiny, little flashlights from distant worlds, there would be colors swirling and billowing through the inky blackness.

You thought it would be dark, and it is, it really is.

It’s a darkness you’ve never experienced before.

But you didn’t expect it to be so comforting or warm or inviting.

You expected to be scared, but you didn’t expect to feel so alive. 

Looking out at it, the vastness makes you feel insignificant. Instead of making you feel weak, though, it makes you feel stronger.

It occurs to you that a universe that big doesn’t care, even about your smallest mistakes.

The heavy oak door swings open behind you and you feel a presence, familiar, next to you.

You turn to look at her and you can’t look away.

For some reason those stars, hundreds of thousands of miles away, paled in comparison to the stars that littered her face, so close you could touch them.

She smiles at you, that sleepy smile you see at breakfast every morning, and you can’t help but grin back. 

You don’t know it yet, can barely understand what this tingly warmth in your chest means.

Those stars in the night sky belonged to everyone, every living creature in the universe.

But her stars?

Those were for you.


	5. Your Moon

2:35 pm  
January 19  
First year post graduation

Sometimes, just when you think you’re so firmly in love with her, that you couldn’t possibly fall any further, you start falling again.

You take her to a farm animal sanctuary for her birthday.

She cries the whole time.

You’re not sure what you were expecting, because it’s just so her to react so strongly, so emotionally, to other living things.

With tears streaming down her cheeks, mouth pulled tight in a half sob half smile, arms wrapped around a horse’s neck, she is the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen.

Her touch is delicate, like she knows the fear this creature must have felt, and is telling it through actions; we understand each other. Her fingers caress the soft hairs on its neck, thread through its mane, with such care as though she were touching a newborn baby.

That is how you know that she has felt like this before.

You’ve only seen this level of care, this gentle touch, directed at you.

And it pulls at your heartstrings to see her show it to another being who is even more vulnerable now than you were then, despite weighing at least a ton more than you.

Somehow through all of the years, through fear and uncertainty, she came out brighter and more hopeful than you thought was possible.

The way she loves, so openly and unabashedly, is something you hope you never stop seeing.

She wears her heart on her sleeve, and gives a part of it, willingly, to every living thing she comes across. 

This world and everyone that lives in it is so precious to her.

Which makes her all the more precious to you.

That thought makes your heart swell with pride, for the both of you.

Because there was a time when you would have been jealous, would have rather watched the world burn, than share her heart with anyone.

But that isn’t you anymore, and sometimes when you’re feeling stuck, like you haven’t changed at all while everyone around you has moved on, you remember just how far you’ve come.

You worked on yourself, did it all on your own. 

But you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t, at least a little bit, because of her.

You were trapped in a frigid, endless night.

She was your moon, ever present and comforting.

But you became the stars, and you filled the night sky together.


	6. Fate

5:30 pm  
April 25th  
Age 26  
In your new house

You have never believed in fate.

To you, it was a word for people who made excuses.

People claimed fate when something didn't work for them, no matter how clearly it was their fault. 

They claimed fate when something did, saying that you were 'perfect for each other' and that you were 'meant to be.'

Your failures and your successes aren't some predestined plan, divine intervention.

You deserved to be in control of your life, of your future.

Your mistakes, and your triumphs, would be your own.

So when she comes home with a brand new monitor, the one you had been considering buying and had just put on your Amazon wishlist, you’re grateful but confused.

She says that you called her to let her know you got the job you wanted, on a Friday night when she was out with Glimmer, and that when she got home she found that her tax return had been deposited into her bank account.

She said that it was fate.

And you froze.

But maybe the idea that fate created circumstances, was ok with you.

Fate didn’t make the two of you friends, didn’t fight through childhood with you, didn’t assist either of you in what it took to grow into a couple that was good for each other.

Fate didn’t get you into college, or get you those scholarships.

Fate didn’t get her the job of her dreams.

Fate didn’t make your relationship, your life, what it was.

But you could accept that maybe fate put you two in that foster home together. 

Maybe fate put Melog and Swift in that animal shelter the times you decided to adopt pets.

Maybe fate made the couple that owned this house before you move, so you could find the home the two of you had been dreaming about since you were children.

And maybe fate put a few extra hundred dollars in her bank account, after a party on a Friday night, the day you found out that you got the job.

And you were ok with fate if that was how it worked.

You are perfect for each other, and you are meant to be. But only because you both chose this, chose to be this and chose to do it together.

Maybe that was fate, because you could never want to be this with anyone else. 


	7. Us

8:45 am  
October 20th  
Junior year of college  
A rainy Friday morning

To you, you’ve always been an ‘us.’ 

Sometimes you forget that she feels the same way. 

You’re running late.

Extremely late.

You miss your bus, and you’re just about to ask her to drive you to campus.

You feel guilty about that because it's cold and rainy and she wasn’t even supposed to leave the apartment today.

She doesn’t have class on Fridays, so she spends them curled up on the couch in her stupid cute unicorn onesie, drinking tea and studying.

You feel awful that you even have to ask, because although you know she would do it for you with nothing less than a smile on her face, you don’t want her to have to.

You also know that if she gets dressed, she’ll probably stay dressed, and you rather like walking into the apartment to see her napping in her onesie. You get to bite your lip and sneak over to her, brushing a flyway lock of hair out of her pink, sleep warmed face as her hazy eyes blink open slowly.

But when you walk back in and tell her that you missed your bus she tells you that you should just take the car on Fridays from now on, since she doesn’t go anywhere.

She says it so casually, so matter of fact.

You pause, and your brain melts a little bit.

Because although you share everything, have always shared everything, for some reason you never even considered that her car would be the same.

When did ‘her car’ become ‘the car’?

You think back to when she bought it; how she took you with her every time she looked at it or test drove it, how she kept asking for your opinion even though you made it clear you know next to nothing about cars.

And then you realize it.

To her, it had always been ‘the car.’

You can’t help but roll your stinging, tear-filled eyes, whether at her or yourself you’re not sure.

When she bought that car you thought, for the first time, that she was buying something just for herself, because she needed it and wanted it.

But she was still thinking about your future together.

So you take the car on Fridays, and you take it the next time it needs an oil change. You split the cost when it needs new tires and you take it to the car wash to vacuum it out. 

And to you, it became ‘the car,’ too. 

You don’t know how you could possibly forget that to her it was never just ‘you’ and ‘her.’

It had always been ‘us.’


	8. Flicker

You see it sometimes.

There’s a glitch, or maybe just a flicker.

Where the air seems to shudder and the color flashes almost opaque.

And you have no proof, no concrete thought process for what it could possibly be. 

But you think it's something to do with the way her thin wrist flicks the frying pan, flipping a pancake effortlessly, flawlessly, in that streak of morning light that hits her at such an angle that the tendons from her hands all the way up her arm stretch and flex.

The air is thicker, heavier.

You see it when she yawns, throwing her arms over her head and stretching so her shirt rides up to reveal the muscles of her abdomen clenching, stiffening.

Your heart stops, and you’re sure that if you were looking at a clock, the hands would have stopped moving.

There isn’t a sound, for that one instant, like the world is quiet just for her.

Or perhaps she paused it just for you.

The air crackles, an isolated lightning storm in your head.

The tussle of her chocolate hair as she pulls it out of a ponytail, gold and red streaks shimmering in the evening glow, is what sets it off this time.

You don’t know how she does it, how she has this control over time and space, the pockets of electricity hidden in the lines between.

And when she catches you staring she smirks because you’re so flustered by it.

She stops time for you, but it clearly kept moving for her.

So you just look ridiculous, really, staring at her like that.

You can’t even explain it because realistically she isn’t doing anything.

She can’t cast a haze over the room, pause the ticking of a clock, shoot electricity up your spine, or set your lungs on fire.

But it sure feels like she can.

When you still don’t say anything, still can’t move or speak, her smirk turns into a smile.

It looks like your apartment, but it doesn’t feel like it.

You’re in a different place entirely, floating in a rainbow nebula.

The room is bathed in sepia,

Clouded in chalk,

Outlined in charcoal. 

It’s faded, pastel, smudged.

Like if you close your eyes, even blink, it would be gone.

A gust of wind or a few stray raindrops could wash it away.

You can feel, at your most base level of being, that you and everything around you is made of the same buzzing, dizzy stardust that exploded from one singular source an infinite number of lifetimes ago.

For that instant you feel like old magic, the deepest connection to the space around you yet at the same time completely separate. 

But in an instant it is gone, and you’re left wondering if that place you were will ever appear to you again.

You know it will.

As long as you’re with her, you’ll see this place again.

She’ll never stop making you feel like this, like there’s an ancient wisdom flowing through your veins.

She’ll never stop making you feel like you’re made of love itself.


	9. Falling

It was hard to pinpoint what this feeling was, at first.

Because you can’t remember a time when she didn't make you feel this way.

It came in waves, the realization that is. 

The feeling, however, was persistent, having been chiseling away at your resolve for as long as you had known her.

But realizing what it was? That took far longer than you cared to admit.

Because in order for you to know what it was, you had to learn what it meant.

And learning how to love was hard work.

You’re supposed to learn from parents or relatives. You’re supposed to feel it in the warmth radiating from a fireplace after a holiday dinner, the embrace before you went to bed, the gentle smiles when you got a homework question right.

But you spent your childhood surrounded by adults that never learned how to love themselves.

So you thought you didn’t know what it felt like, because there was no one to show you.

But the truth was that you learned how to love, in spite of them.

You learned through blushes and smiles, held hands and borrowed sweatshirts, flowers from the garden and peanut butter sandwiches.

And she learned right alongside you.

So when she turns to you, sleepy bedroom eyes and stroking fingers, asking when you knew you loved her, you don’t know what to say.

It wasn’t one moment, one thing that made your heart say that she was the one.

It was the moments that your perspective shifted, like you were standing to the side, witnessing her actions and your reactions completely separately from yourself.

The truth was that you had been falling in love with her the whole time.

There wasn’t a moment that you knew her that you weren't falling.

You just kept waiting to land.

You had a feeling you never would.

Because falling in love with her was a process, and it happened over and over again.

It happened every day whether you were thinking about her or not, whether you were spending time with her or apart. 

Every touch, sideways glance, wink, nod, brush of fingers on your cheek, smile in those sleepy early morning hours, made you fall even further.

Because falling in love didn’t start with her throwing you off the cliff.

Falling in love started with you jumping.


	10. Lazy Mornings

You’ve always shared these lazy mornings.

Where the sun streaks across your eyes and the warm breath fanning over your face makes that smile creep onto your lips.

You reach your hand forward to touch whatever part of her you can reach, needing the contact more than oxygen at this point.

For those blurry instances, the seconds when you can’t tell where you are, you can’t tell when you are, you just know that you’re with her.

And that thought makes your smile grow wider, your eyes sting, your breath catch.

It always has.

Because you’ve woken up like this a lot since you’ve met her,

Nearly every day.

And you don’t know if you’re still in that foster home, sharing the bottom bunk in your bed, or your dorm with Glimmer sleeping feet away from you. You’re not sure if you’re in your first apartment off campus, the apartment downtown across from the best coffee shop in the city, the house you bought together.

Because it doesn’t matter.

As long as you’re waking up next to her, it doesn’t matter where, or when, or how. 

You can sometimes tell before opening your eyes though.

The length of her hair,

The smell of the detergent on your sheets,

The little scar on her shoulder.

The more you think about it the closer you get to knowing.

But if you woke up and suddenly there you were, all those years ago, in bed next to her, the scared and worried children you started out as?

Well that would be alright.

Because you would have each other.

And you already knew, from years of experience,

That nothing really bad could happen, as long as you had each other.

You hope, with all of your being, that no matter how many times you wake up like this,

It never stops feeling old and new,

Ancient and eternal,

Fresh and clean.

You hope that it never stops feeling familiar, but that you never take each new moment for granted.

There was a time when you nearly forgot, you nearly lost her, and the world almost closed in around you.

She came back to you, and you would be eternally grateful for that.

In these lazy mornings, the quiet before the chaos of the day began, when you were undoubtedly and irrevocably yourselves,

Your love didn't bathe you, it drowned you, filled your lungs and dulled your senses, until all you could see or feel was her.

So if you had to do it all over again?

Well that would just mean you got more time to love her. 


	11. Sugar

She was sugar

Granular, similar to salt in more ways than one.

That alone made people steer clear of her, fearful of the rough edge, the abrasiveness.

Sure, salt had its place, but not in the quantity they saw in her.

She used it to her advantage for years, keeping people at arm's length to save herself the pain.

And maybe sometimes she was salt.

She was self destructive, and used the only mechanisms she was taught, when she was afraid she wouldn’t have anything to fall back on.

Her own wounds were the last place she wanted the salt to sting.

Coincidentally, they stung the worst.

It was a process that took years, decades even.

The more of your own wounds you opened up, unafraid of the depth of pain she could have easily rubbed in them, the more she trusted you.

You trusted her in return.

And while you closed those wounds together, you learned something else.

Her abrasiveness was healing, like a sugar scrub that wore away the rough patches on your heart, the epidermis of your soul, leaving it softer and healthier than it had ever been before.

That wasn’t all.

As soon as you got close you could taste how sweet she was.

It was what made you smile, made you feel feather light, energized you, gave you strength, gave you comfort.

On cold rainy Saturdays when you walked in the kitchen to see her grilling sandwiches and stirring a pot of soup, the sweetness made you grin and hurt your teeth, like a grocery store cake.

More than that, you found that it took the edge off of things that used to be bitter.

A dark roast coffee or a strong espresso, sour berries, lemon juice, the drive through your home town, icy mornings when you had to clear the car off to go to work.

The things about life that made your lips pucker and your mouth water in all the wrong ways were made so much better just by the smallest presence of that quality of her that was just so irrevocably herself. 

Not everyone got to see it, still filled in the picture in their minds with a salt shaker when they didn’t know what they were looking at.

But she was sweet for you, chose to be sweet for you.

So you integrated her into your life, stirred her into your morning tea, sprinkled her on toast with cinnamon, added a tiny spoonful to your protein shakes.

And soon she was everywhere that you were.

You were separate, but then you folded yourselves together into a batter or a meringue.

Both of you were bold and strong and could stand on your own,

But you were so much more together.


End file.
